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  Ireland didn’t qualify for Euro ’96, the 1998 World Cup or Euro 2000. I’d been at the Castle Bar in St Stephen’s Green as Ireland were on the verge of going out to Belgium in a play-off match. Even though there was still time for them to save the game, the people in the pub seemed to sense that luck had run out for the team. Where once punters would have screamed at the TV and shouted ‘olé olé’ mindlessly in Dalek-like voices for all they were worth, now they idly chatted. Perhaps they were bored with football now. When the final whistle went and Ireland were out, the atmosphere didn’t seem to change remarkably. If this was England there would be the possibility of a riot. Maybe my sneaking suspicion was correct – that the Irish weren’t really into football so much as wanting an excuse to be patriotic and have a laugh. All along perhaps they just wanted to see how far the joke would go.

  But then the success of their under-16 and under-18 teams, in the European and World Championships respectively, led to another upsurge of football fever. I pointed out to quite a few people that in England no-one would give a toss if we won those tournaments but they all told me to shut up and fuck off back to Australia.

  IRISH MYTHS & LEGENDS 4

  Some Ancient Sagas of Magical Creatures

  Finbarr, the Lobster of Moral Outrage

  And Finn Mac Cool did look on his new bride Ethel and verily his testosterone levels shot through the roof of his ring fort. ‘I shall leave thee standing here naked guarded only by my faithful servant Diarmuid while I do go play gulf.’ For gulf was the entertainment of the lords and they did do their business thereof therein, thereof.

  And Ethel, off with Diarmuid did run, so Finn did consult his magician who brought in Finbarr the lobster of moral outrage.

  ‘It’s outrageous – they should be banned!’ said Finbarr. And so they did cook Finbarr and eat him and afterward they were full with the pleasures of moral outrage. ‘Something should be done about it!’ they all shouted.

  Sean, the Dublin Bay Prawn of Neutrality

  And so it came to pass that Queen Maeve was called in to settle a dispute between two farmers. One had stolen the other’s chickens so he had stolen the first’s pigs, so he had stolen the second’s sheep so he had stolen the first’s horse so he had stolen the first’s bull so he had stolen the second’s wife so he had stolen the first’s eldest son so he had stolen the first’s house so he had stolen the second’s house so he had stolen the rest of the first’s stuff so he had stolen the rest of the second’s stuff and by the time they had come to Queen Maeve the first had the life and house and family of the second and the second had the life and house and family of the first.

  Queen Maeve wanted to be impartial and so she did barbecue Sean the magic Dublin Bay prawn of neutrality. The gift that Sean gave was for the eater to be totally impartial in any matter. And of course after eating Sean, Maeve could not decide who was right and who was wrong.

  ‘I can see it from both sides,’ said she, ‘and I really don’t want to make a decision. Um er um errr.’ She did deliberate for days but it was no use. Sean’s powers had gripped her in a state of total neutrality.

  As it was, the dispute settled itself. The two farmers carried on stealing from each other until they had stolen their old lives and stuff back.

  Kevin, the Carp of Storytelling

  And long before the legend of the Blarney stone did exist there was in the kingdom of Erin a magic carp called Kevin who had magical powers of storytelling. And the legend was that whosoever should eat this Kevin would for ever be a magical storyteller. And so it came to pass that Finn Mac Cool did fish the mighty Shannon river one morn and did catch Kevin.

  ‘Hey, did I tell you about that time I was in Rathmines with the girl from Aer Lingus?’ said Kevin. And Finn did stand back and say, ‘No, I haven’t heard that story.’

  ‘Yeah, well, her fellah was this guy from the Northside up off near the station, the main one, yeah and blah blahblah etc. etc.,’ so Finn Mac Cool did kill Kevin and eat him and after that he was never the same man.

  For the next day he did lead his troops into battle and he was talking non-stop. ‘Hey, did I tell you about that time I was in a battle with the Fir Bolgs and I got off with that Fir Bolg chick?’ and his warriors got mighty bored and did feck off and Finn was left alone talking to himself.

  SHANEWORLD

  West

  Lost Highway – A Clever Use of the Film Title to Describe the Little Roads around Cork City

  County Cork

  Cork has long been my favourite Irish city. It’s got the bustle, noise and pollution of Dublin without the shiny suits, mobile phones, rowdy vomit-caked English tourists and crazy house prices. There’s something of the grand old European metropolis about it, the ‘seen-better-days’ feel of Georgian houses with peeling paint on winding lanes, particularly looking up at Richmond Hill and the church at Shandon, then at the split river which brings to mind the nickname ‘Venice of the N25’. There are little streets with craft shops and rickety old men’s boozers, two breweries (Murphy’s and Beamish have their headquarters here), some fine little restaurants tucked away and a small but lovely art gallery. There’s a film festival, a folk festival and a jazz festival every year. Sometimes I wonder why I don’t live in Cork.

  It is a bugger to drive in, though. I had already checked where the garages were, so drove around to them, but no-one seemed to be interested. I couldn’t even get a price out of some of them – one bloke had a good look at the Singing Leprechaun sitting there in the front grinning, as if to say, ‘What’s he got to smile about?’ Then he said he wasn’t interested. I got tired of this so I parked the car by the river. I had arranged to meet some friends, Theresa and Molly, on the corner of Brian Boru Street about half an hour later so made some phone calls to more garages. It was the same old story. ‘Yeah aid bay interested shar but ye’d have te bring it in now an ay caerrn’t say ai’d gev ye mare dan tree grand.’ Another said no outright and I gave up, and sat down and did a sketch of the river. Theresa and Molly arrived and we chatted about this and that, then I drove them back to their house in a little village out past Blarney, to the north-west of the city.

  At the house we had some food, Molly went to bed, then Theresa and I sat up until about four in the morning going through several bottles of red wine, me blathering about the car – ‘Yeah, well, it looks like a girl’s car, I’ll grant you that, but it’s got a bit of a kick, yer know …’. It was very irresponsible of me because she had her driving test the next day (although she hadn’t managed to get hold of a car that was suitably insured for her to drive). I offered her mine but it would have been too complicated to sort out in time. After some more wine and some impassioned poetry reading we hit the sack. Next morning, while I had my second successive hangover, Theresa was in a bad state. There was no way she was going to be able to even pick up car keys, never mind drive. She glumly told me that she wouldn’t get a test through now for several months. I felt terrible. They waved me off and I headed into a labyrinth of little roads. Theresa had given me directions – something like left, left, right, right, straight on at a tree, left, right at the faery ring, left at the old man on the cart, straight on for two miles, right, left, third turn on your right and you’re on the Mallow Road. It didn’t take me long to get lost. I’d got a gift from Molly before I left, a little painting she’d done recently. I looked at the mixture of coloured lines and blobs and realised that I had more chance of getting onto a main road by using this as a map.

  I’ve always enjoyed driving in Ireland, getting lost on little country roads like this. I like the feeling of taking it easy. There is a lot of road and still, in comparison with most countries in Europe, not that many cars. It’s still a healthy country, the arteries of travel still clear and pumping effectively.1

  Even some of the main roads have a slow lane, if you just want to check out the scenery (or if you’re driving an articulated lorry and there are about two hundred vehicles behind you). Drivers in Ireland c
an be divided into four different categories: local drivers, old ladies, English tourists and farmers. Farmers2 on tractors are like pheasants. They’ll wait and wait for a car – sometimes for as much as three or four days. Then when one does come they will shoot out and hog the centre of the road.

  The tractor/pheasant connection

  If the farmer is just going back to his farm from a field but has been made to wait a long time because there was no car for him to annoy, he will become agitated. When a car does eventually come, he will deliberately drive on to the next major town or tourist destination, calculating that this is where the car will be heading. This won’t bother the local driver unduly. He’ll simply overtake at 100 mph when he gets to the next dangerous bit of road. He’ll do this, moreover, while reading the sports page of the Irish Independent and swigging from a can of Harp.

  The old lady driver will not be too upset either. After all, the tractor, which will be travelling at its cruising speed of about 15 mph, will be going twice as fast as her own top speed. It is the English tourist who has most to fear from the farmer. For a while he will stay back, chugging along and saying to himself (or any passenger that might be unfortunate enough to be travelling with this driver – unless it’s a midget green fabric-based musical toy, in which case it won’t care), ‘Ha ha! Isn’t life grand? The rural vibe! Gives you time to take in the surroundings when you’re going slowly. I love driving like this.’

  He will want to bond with the farmer, in fact, pointing out to his passengers that he understands country ways and he feels bad about eight hundred years of British persecution, etc. He’ll do this sticking his thumb up and grinning a lot in the hope of catching the farmer’s eye.

  The farmer will look in the wing mirror and think, ‘Who is this stupid fecker gurning away behind me? I’d better go even slower and move out into the centre of the road, just in case.’

  The English tourist will be able to handle this for a while – for a few hundred miles or so of winding country lanes. Then he’ll decide it’s time to get tough and decisive – it’s time to overtake. He’ll weave into the centre of the road but he won’t be able to see anything. Then back again. This will go on for ages, with the farmer moving out into the centre of the road, as if in a dance, following the English tourist’s movements. Eventually the road will widen and become straight at last, the English tourist will see a massive gap and the road ahead for three or four miles. With a surge of testosterone he’ll rev the engine in triumph. Then the farmer will suddenly turn into the nearest field and the English tourist will spend the rest of his life a bitter and twisted alcoholic.

  The roads aren’t always quite so lovely. One early autumn evening a year or so earlier Theresa had been driving us in her little late-seventies’ Ford Escort, on the main road from Cork to her house in driving rain when the car simply gave out. We were stuck in the slow lane with no lights, no warning triangle, no torch, nothing, as large lorries lumbered along the slow lane toward us. We were sitting ducks, so I ended up standing out in the storm about thirty yards along the road using an empty Chinese curry sauce box as a reflector for about forty-five minutes. Each time a lorry came towards me, I started to jump about – eventually they would all veer off at the last moment, like lumbering dinosaurs. Eventually the Mallow AA recovery vehicle – an old guy and his wife in a pick-up truck – arrived and took us back through the pitch black night to Theresa’s house. The car has now been put out to grass at a local garage, though apparently there are a few people interested in purchasing her as a runabout, the crazy bastards. According to official figures road deaths per head in Ireland are twice that of Britain. It used to be because of all the rust buckets being driven, though by the time of our breakdown the Irish Government were operating a buy-back policy on old cars – if you bought a new car they’d give you a grand for the old one. Now it’s because up to a quarter of all Irish drivers have not passed their tests. As soon as you get a provisional licence you are allowed to drive on your own and, as Theresa found out after our session, it can take an age to actually get a test – there just aren’t the resources to get everyone tested quickly. Perhaps some of the money from EU grants that’s been pumped into road building and improvement (especially prior to the Tour de France in 1998 – though, obviously, only the roads on the actual route got done up) could be channelled into getting people passed and educated properly for road use. Another theory is that increased prosperity is the main cause behind the high death rate – people are buying bigger and faster cars as life has started to speed up.3

  But not everywhere. A couple of miles before the Mallow road an old car with a lady driver suddenly appeared in front of me in an example of flagrant plagiarism of the official tractor/pheasant principle. Being an English tourist, I simply put my feet up and said to myself, ‘Ha ha! Isn’t life grand? The rural vibe! Gives you time to take in the surroundings when you’re going slowly. I love driving like this.’ Driving alone, you have to get used to talking to yourself sometimes.

  * * *

  1 The amount of cars on the roads has started to increase dramatically in recent years due to the prosperity of ‘Celtic stripy big cat’ years.

  2 I haven’t got a thing against farmers. I’d like to say that some of my best friends are farmers but it wouldn’t be true. I know some farmers back in Lincolnshire who are great lads. But there was this posh little prick at school who used to boast that his dad had got a subsidy from the EU to build a gate that they didn’t need. He thought this was hilarious. Also, as a kid I was in love with a girl whose dad was a pig farmer.

  3 ‘Deaths on Irish Roads’ (Snappy title, hey?) – Ronan McGreevy, Irish Post, Sept. ’98.

  Fungie the Dolphin, the Johnsons of Enniskillen, the Talking Dogs and the American Poet

  Dingle, Co. Kerry

  Like thousands of sentimental saddos before me, I was going to Dingle to see Fungie the dolphin.

  I’d stayed the night before in Tralee where, after booking into a hotel, I did three things. I bought a figurine of a pretty lady in blue robes and some nice beads attached to a little cross at an Our Lady Figurine superstore near the main street. I sat in a Chinese restaurant staffed by big, loud, beautiful country girls and ate until I could hardly move – spring rolls, pan fried squid with ginger; broccoli in chilli; a big plate of moist noodles; chicken and black beans; too much rice. And I went to bed early. For the first time since 1977.

  In Dingle I decided to do it properly this time. At the little office on the quay, I booked a boat out to see Fungie, but when I turned up a few hours later, alone, with my eagerly desperate ‘Dolphin Loving’ expression, the weather had turned. Four years earlier my Dad and I had gone in search of the little creature and stood at the quayside for about ten minutes looking out into the bay. He didn’t show, so we gave up (we’re an impatient family – for instance, we celebrated the Millennium in 1998) and decided to continue our Seagoing Mammal Search in some of the many pubs in the town. Nobody had seen him, they said, but we did find amazing little bars that looked like someone’s front room with only one other person drinking, always a square-headed lad with heavy black eyebrows. My dad impressed everyone with his knowledge of Guinness, before we both fell over.

  ‘It’s too choppy,’ said the thin Chet Baker lookalike fisherman. ‘It’ll be much too difficult out there.’ I thought of saying, ‘Let’s do it the hard way,’ but suspected it was probably an old joke round these parts. I got my money back anyway and decided to celebrate in Dick Mac’s famous pub, on a little side street opposite the church. It’s an old-fashioned hardware shop on one side, the other a great little bar with old-fashioned snug. I fought my way into the snug just as a crowd of wealthy and well-fed Eurotourists were vacating it, and sat in there on my own, like an extra from Ryan’s Daughter. About ten minutes later a good-looking dark-haired family came in and said mind if we join you. Not at all, I said, as they squeezed in on either side of me. I sat quietly as they jabbered away – strangely all the
kids, who looked quite alike, had different accents. The lad, in his thirties, sounded as though he came from the north, as did the short-haired girl with him (his wife or girlfriend); the very pretty young one with a mass of black curls sounded like a Dub, and the other daughter, an attractive New-Ageish lass, had a strange Anglo-Dublin-Ulster hybrid. The two parents, him beardedly benign, her strong-boned and handsome, both sounded northern English. Eventually curiosity and impatience got the better of me and I had to ask about their entire family history. They were the Johnsons from Enniskillen. Mum and Dad were from York and had moved over in the sixties for a better standard of living. They saw my raised eyebrows. The North, they said, was a wonderful place to live. The kids had lived all over since, hence the accents. We all chattered and talked shite for a while. They’d seen me doodling and making notes when they came in and the father now mentioned it and asked if I was writing a book or something. I lied and said no, not wanting to ruin the funny and spontaneous nature of our conversations. He told me they knew of a writer, Carlo Gebler, who’d done a book on the North called The Glass Curtain. I’d never heard of it but agreed to check it out.1

  The Johnsons of Enniskillen had come to Dingle for the same reason as me, to see the dolphin. The difference was that they had organised it properly and were going swimming with all the gear, to give it hugs and ask it questions about world peace and the meaning of life, that kind of thing. Why don’t you come out with us, they said? It’ll be great. I don’t think so, I said. Ah, go on. They told me where they would be meeting, very early the next morning. Then it was time to be kicked out of the pub.